


take it or leave it

by melforbes



Category: The X-Files RPF
Genre: alternate universe kind of, but also i love myself and this, i hate myself and this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-25 23:17:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17734541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melforbes/pseuds/melforbes
Summary: what started out as g*llovny rpf that transformed into not g*llovny rpf but was still g*llovny rpf at its core and anyway. Anyway. life is suffering. also they smoke weed and get taco bell





	take it or leave it

**Author's Note:**

> [that stupid video of them hugging](https://skullsmuldon.tumblr.com/post/182702845986/david-and-gillian) took me over. i guess technically speaking this is actually original work but like i mean. it wasn't supposed to be. if the intention was there in the beginning, does that make it so? i cringe but also am weirdly proud of this and therefore it's going on the page. gulp. also i have a paired playlist for it [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5tKk8qL2mgK-f0H8TIF_fhGjq2a5PQC).

His problem is that she is so stunning that she makes him momentarily forget why they divorced in the first place. 

Bardot neckline, little black dress, she looks almost too tantalizing and tasteless for a wedding. The necklace she wears is probably from a thrown-away-in-six-months boyfriend, and even though he had put one on her, he can’t imagine her ever wearing a wedding band, her hands simply meant to be bare. Drinking a coke with a lime slice, she’s talking up the bride’s family, saying that the ceremony was beautiful - it wasn’t - and patting the mother of the bride on the shoulder as she admires that beautiful cake - one of those under-iced ones that he knows remind her of birthdays in which the cake she made for their children didn’t perform well at all. After she leaves the conversation, after he joins in with old uncles and aunts who want to know how his entrepreneurial business is going, he watches her from afar, how she mingles around that cake that he knows she must find so ugly. Then, she gauges the room, looks back and forth with peeled eyes, and, once she knows that nobody is looking, takes a heap of cake-frosting onto her finger, then licks the sugar off. 

They’re seated together, of course. This is a family wedding, so two people who once shared a house but not a last name are bound to be sat together. _Which side of the family are you on?_  someone sitting alongside him at the reception table asks, and the unfortunate thing is that he’s technically on both sides. The groom is a cousin of his; the bride is a far-off cousin of the groom’s. Though the two aren’t blood-related, he knows that a vast majority of the people in the room are people related to him in some way, and that the whole _combination of families_  already happened long before this marriage took place. Looking through his peripheries to his left, he can see her sitting alongside him, making idle conversation with another of his family members, crossing her legs and already ditching her wedges. Who wears wedges to a winter wedding? _She does,_  he thinks, because he knows she does. He knows she does.

He wants to talk to her about the incest taboo and how fucking funny it is that two cousins are getting married. He knows how that would make her laugh. And when he leaves this reception, when he goes back upstairs to his room at this shabby Hilton and climbs into the one king bed alone, he’ll wish she would follow him up, would flop gracelessly onto the bed and pick up the television remote immediately, finding _The Godfather_  on AMC, the version that’s edited for violence and swears. Without commercials, it would be three hours; she’ll stay on his makeshift bed for the five it takes to finish the film, kicking off her wedges and handing him her own room key as she asks _can you go get my pajamas?_  And along the way, she’ll ask if they can order room service, and when he says that’s too expensive and not even good, she’ll say, Chinese then, and they’ll each end up with their own personal oyster-pail of lo mein because she wants pork and he doesn’t, and they’ll eat with chopsticks in the way that they both know they can’t manage, and she’ll slurp noodles in the way he so hates, and he’ll end up with the shakes because of the sodium, and by morning, the whole room will smell like soy sauce and meat. Before they had kids, they used to get veggie egg rolls and split them in half as if they were a wishbone, each tugging at an end. He wants to order egg rolls with her and make the bet, _If my side is longer, then you have to kiss me._  He wants to see the look on her face after that challenge, whether it’s spaced-out and unsure or pure _game on._

Oh, and he wants to look at her, really look, even right now, especially right now, while they’re so close together in dim light as other people dance to the greatest hits of the early 2000s, music he knows she hates. She’s put on her glasses, bulky ones, ones a little too big for her face, but she’s into that kind of thing now, the atypical stuff; though they look wrong with the pretty, silky dress, he thinks that she can rock it, if anyone really can. Once the woman she was talking to stands up to go dance, she sits back, legs crossed, bored pout on her lips. Then, she goes into her purse and takes out a whole bar of chocolate - the dark kind, the stuff that absolutely no one but her likes - and tears off a piece.

“Craving,” she says when she notices him staring. “I want that fucking cake.”

“Yes, that cake that you think is _so_  beautiful.”

“Shut up.”

She takes a bite; it’s horribly intimate to hear the crunch so close to him. On Valentine’s Day a number of years ago, after he’d learned that chocolate samplers weren’t her forte and that seven dark chocolate bars was more like it, they were sitting together and watching _My Best Friend’s Wedding_  on HBO while she crunched down on chocolate late enough at night that he knew she would be restless and especially clingy at two in the morning. And midway through the movie, she turned toward him, his arm around her shoulders, their sides flush, and told him, _I want to marry you._  The statement had taken him by such surprise that he wasn’t sure of the proper reaction, of if she’d really said it at all. _I mean it,_  she said, looking down at her lap, a little bit of melted chocolate on her lips. _It’s just...that’s how I feel. Take it or leave it._

He’d taken it. Oh, he’d _really_  taken it. And then, they were married in the summer, and she was pregnant by fall, and their lives went from being young and listless to having forced meaning. The next Valentine’s Day, she just wanted to stay home and watch movies, practically the same thing they always did, but shouldn’t things have been more special? That was their problem: things were never as special as they were supposed to be. Thus, it felt normal when he started going to strip clubs for dinner instead of going home, or when he started working spare hours, or when he did anything other than cheat on her in order to get away from her. _Is there another woman?_  she asked once in rage, tears on her cheeks, the kids asleep upstairs but bound to wake in a few minutes, and it had felt like failure to think _no, not another woman, because there’s no other woman I want to be around other than you, and still, I can’t stand to be around you._  And she would ask the same insecure questions, about her body or her age, about how she cooked, about their bedroom duvet, about anything that to her wouldn’t otherwise have mattered, and the answer was always no. He loved her, and he couldn’t stand to be near her. What kind of fucked up was that?

Now, she had custody because he went through a stint with drugs. He hasn’t seen his kids in four years. Though he thinks he could ask her to show him some recent pictures on her phone, he’s too scared of what that could mean to do so.

When the cake is cut, she rolls her eyes at how the newlyweds force cake in each other’s faces, but at their own wedding, she crushed cake into his face so extensively that in bed that night she had to brush frosting out of his eyebrows. The photo from their version of this moment used to be the lock screen background on his phone, back when things were still good between them. By the time she finally gets a slice of the marble cake, she seems near-desperate to tear into the slice, as if this was the only reason she came to the wedding, but after one bite, she looks over at him and says, “This cake is fucking disgusting.”

Out of curiosity, he takes a bite of his own slice, and yes, this is _not_ good cake, very crumbly, tasting like chemicals and sand. He grimaces, and she laughs lightly at the look, then says, “Want to get out of here?”

“What?”

“Some real food,” she says. “Real cake.”

“It’s eight in the evening.”

“And?”

He opens his mouth to speak but doesn’t know how to respond.

“Do you still have that dinky electric car?” she asks.

“Yeah, it’s parked outside.”

“Great.”

She stands, gathering up her purse, leaving the bad cake behind, implying that he must follow her; he does, heeling her as they leave the ballroom, but at the exit, there’s a photographer and a white backdrop, and they’re about to be hounded.

“Hey, before you leave!” the photographer shouts over the music to them. “Free souvenir pictures. We have props too.”

“No, thank you,” she says, but he hangs back for a moment, forcing her to wait. 

Shrugging, he gives an _old time’s sake_  smile, so she rolls her eyes, goes to stand in front of the backdrop with him.

“Now,” the photographer says, “put your arms around him. Like you love each other.”

She obliges somewhat unhappily, taking to him with an awkward too-short gesture, but he hasn’t felt her arms around him in so long that he doesn’t care whether or not the way she holds him is sloppy. The photographer snaps a picture on an instant-printing camera, then shakes the photograph and passes it to them.

“Hope you two had a good time,” the photographer says with a nod.

“We didn’t,” she says, her ex-husband taking the photo and heeling her. “The cake fucking sucked.”

* * *

“I’ll have, um,” he says, thinking through the vegetarian menu items. He’s against dairy products now too, but this place has always had vegan options, so he should be fine.

“I’ll have four crunchy tacos,” she interjects, “sub chicken for beef, add chipotle sauce, extra cheese, guacamole, sour cream.”

“On all four?” the cashier at Taco Bell asks.

She furrows her brow as if that’s a ridiculous question, then says, “Yes, on all four.”

“Anything else?”

“One order of cinnamon twists.” She squints up at the menu. “And twelve Cinnabon Delights. And two bottles of water.”

She looks to him with a neutral pout on his lips, asking _what’s taking you so long?_

“Um,” he says, “crunch wrap. Beans, no meat. No cheese.”

“Just one?” the cashier asks.

“Three,” she says alongside him, hugging herself into her coat. It’s cold, and all she has on her lower legs is pantyhose. “And a side of chips and guacamole.” 

She takes four of each kind of hot sauce in their to-go bag, then leads them back outside to his car. 

“We should get beers,” she says, but he shakes his head, isn’t really one for drinking anymore.

“I have Bubba Kush in the glove compartment,” he says, unlocking his car so that she can climb into the passenger’s seat.

_Of course you do,_  he hears her mumble under her breath, but she opens up the glovebox anyway, finds rolling papers and plastic-bagged marijuana. With her eyes wide but tired, he can tell what she’s thinking: _it seems that nothing has changed._

“I can-”

He interrupts himself when she starts rolling a joint as if it’s second nature, as if she’s done this every day for the past twenty years, as if she lives in a state where this is legal. 

“Start the car,” she insists, licking the tip of her finger as she works. “I’m cold.”

So he does, and the radio begins to play, “Egyptian Reggae” sounding off against the click of a lighter in her palm, an inhalation of smoke. She takes one more hit as the song changes, then passes him the joint; when she opens up the bag of food, the car already smells like bad tacos and weed, not that it didn’t before now. He takes a deep breath on the joint, holds it for as long as he can, then lets the breath go, trying to let it relax him. In the passenger’s seat, she crunches into one of the four tacos, and he can feel the world still in that moment just enough, in the half-a-second between songs on the radio, that the sound is remarkably more romantic than he could ever imagine.

He wanted to take her to a nice restaurant, but she declined, saying she wanted something cheap and dirty. _There’s much better Mexican food here,_  he said, but still, this was her decision, and where she wanted to go, he would go. Though he’s not going to be able to finish the crunch wraps, they’re too cheap for him to give a damn, and it’s not as if he’s short on funds nowadays. He could’ve bought her thirty crunchy tacos, probably even a hundred, without batting an eyelash, but she’d never been one for excess. 

Taking a sip of water in between tacos, she looks over at him, then looks to the joint, then looks back at him, so he passes her the joint as she says a sarcastic little _thank you._

As he takes his first bite, he feels something ruffle in his pants-pocket, so with his open hand, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out the now-bent photograph of them together at the wedding. It’s developed now, and they look so awkward, so uncomfortable, his smile uneasy, her clutch on him at the wrong height. 

“Hey,” he says, passing her the photograph, “you should take this.”

Looking down, she sees the photograph, then huffs, says, “You were the one who wanted it.”

“I never actually asked,” he says. Then, he adds, just because he means it, “You could’ve said no.”

She huffs again, gives, “It’s just one picture.”

“Take it,” he insists, so finally, she takes it, stuffs it into her purse, lets it get lost down there. He expects that the next time she sees it will be when she gets this purse out before another family wedding a few years down the line, and then, she’ll look at it and scoff, asking herself, _what the fuck were you thinking? He’s a loser. Keep him out of your life._

“So,” she says, trying to change the subject, “how’s work?”

“Great,” he says and means it. “The company’s doing well. Keeping up with the times and whatnot. How’s work for you?”

“Good,” she says as he realizes that he can’t even remember what she does for a living nowadays. 

They’re silent as she passes the joint back to him, as she takes to her final taco, as she’s surprisingly still eating; one crunch wrap was enough for him for both right now and the rest of his life. Still, he’s intrigued by the cinnamon donuts and twists, so he reaches over into the bag and takes some out. 

“Better than the cake,” he says, crunching into one.

“Cardboard would be better than that cake.”

And then, in the middle of a Janis Joplin song, the power in the car cuts out, and he realizes that, in all of the hubbub of seeing her and then leaving with her, he forgot to charge his car. Looking to him, she asks with her eyes what’s going on, and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he forgot to plug his car in, as if it’s a phone.

“My car ran out of battery,” he explains.

“Do you have jumper-cables?”

“No, it doesn’t work like that.”   


And it takes her a few seconds to put it together, but then, she starts laughing, snorts with the effort of it, shaking her head at how ridiculous a concept that is.

“There’s this thing called _gasoline,_ ” she tells him, still laughing. “They use it to power cars so that they don’t _run out of battery._ ”

“Shut up.”

“It’s killing the earth, mind you!” she specifies. “But you don’t have to plug your fucking car in at night. Tell me, does this thing have a Do Not Disturb mode?”

“It’s hip nowadays,” he insists. “It’s environmentally-conscious.”

“Yes, all you Silicon Valley pricks have one,” she says, “but I’ll bet most keep newer strains of weed in the glovebox.”

With that, his face fades; he looks down at his lap, not sure how to respond. So, he’s still a degenerate to her. He makes multiples of six figures a year, and he’s still a degenerate to her. But then again, why did he ever think six figures would impress her? Why did he think that a strong career would make her love him again? When things ended, they ended because he didn’t want to be around her anymore, because all he would do was work; work drove them apart, and now, he expects her to be impressed with how he’s a big name in the industry, how he drives a nice electric car and how he can pay for much of anything. This is why he doesn’t deserve her: she so clearly communicates what she wants, but he refuses to listen and instead does nearly the opposite thinking it will impress her. 

She clears her throat, then says fretfully, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“No,” he says, “you’re right.”

Then, he gets out of the car, takes his keys with him, opens his phone to call an Uber. They’re going back to the hotel, and they’ll go to their separate rooms, and this little run-in will be forgotten by morning. He shouldn’t be driving stoned anyway. When she comes to join him, leaving her wrappers behind on the passenger’s seat but taking the mostly-full bag of food with her, she looks down at his phone to see what he’s doing, notices which address he chooses. 

“Are you staying in the hotel,” she asks, “or is that for me?”

“Third floor,” he replies indifferently.

“Alright.”

So they stand there together, her taking Cinnabon bites into her mouth, him shoving his hands into his pockets in order to keep them warm. When she offers him a snack, he shakes his head, so she shrugs, takes another for herself. Back when they first started living together, back when university stress had them smoking on the daily, they had an ongoing joke; whenever they ordered a pizza, she would end up eating the vast majority of it, perhaps the whole thing if given such an opportunity, and he started calling her _three quarters_  after that. His favorite times were when they would go out behind their main building at the university, slip into the bushes in the dark, and smoke together, then heading back inside stinking and scavenging their pockets for change so that they could get a Three Musketeers to share from a vending machine; chocolate never tasted as good as it did while he was high and trying to study with her, the two of them cast in uncomfortable fluorescent lighting, the stress of life making the sweet taste all the sweeter.

And it’s cold outside, so he takes his own coat off, puts it over her shoulders, sees the silent look of thanks she offers him. She used to always shiver. _No meat on your bones,_  he would say before rubbing his palms over her arms, warming her up. Though it’s winter, the bone-deep chill doesn’t really come here, so they’re only cold, not freezing, but still, he gravitates toward her, toward how warm she is. Next door, there’s a club, a loud one with resounding base music, but instead of playing something to sweatily dance to, the place starts playing something soft and romantic, and they can barely hear the sound, the crowds and buildings muffling it, but he knows what it is, and for a moment, a single split second, he thinks of God, for no one other than God would play their wedding song at a club on a Saturday night after they spent their afternoon being divorced at a wedding. Or maybe it’s a hallucination, maybe it’s the weed, but either way, he hears it, and when he looks down at her, at the strange melancholy look in her eyes, he knows she can hear it too. 

“Here,” he says, goosebumps on his arm as he offers her a hand.

She’s confused only until he brings an arm around her back, clasping their palms together, asking her rather forwardly for a dance. As she gives in, she doesn’t seem excited, not in love, not much of anything, but she leans against him in that way she always used so, and as he sways her, as he keeps time with a beat he can remember so well, he wants to tell her, _I miss you. I miss you so much that I can’t bear it sometimes. When I wake up, I’m alone, or I’m with someone I don’t even like, and it’s just...it’s monotonous. I have been so stupid. Back when it all fell apart, people told me, You’re losing the best woman you’ll ever have, and the thing is, I didn’t think they were right because I thought that you’d gone from being so easygoing and kind to being a total jerk. But really, I was the jerk. I should’ve listened to you. Hell, I should’ve just known. I should’ve known how taxing a life like ours could be on you. I should’ve known that the ease I felt was all a result of your hard work. But I didn’t, and I fucked up. I ruined things. I don’t think I’m ever going to forgive myself for it._

With her head resting against his shoulder, he can feel the movement of her mascara as she closes her eyes, and he wants to squeeze her closer but doesn’t want her to know what he’s thinking. _I love you,_  he thinks, as if that could change anything. _I love you, and I fucked up. I’m so sorry. I don’t even know how I got like this, but I think that just...a little bit of you could help me. Not all of you, just a little bit. An apartment near you guys, maybe. I could see the kids more. I could take them to school for you. It wouldn’t be much, but it would be something. I don’t want to be a mailed birthday card kind of father anymore. And I don’t want to be a husband like I was. I don’t even know if you’re seeing anyone. But I want to try again. I want so desperately to try again. I love you. Please let me try again._

And the song ends, but she stays in his arms until their Uber arrives. Then, she breaks away, lets him open the back car door for her, lets him slide in after her. On his cell phone, the driver selects a Spotify playlist called _white married couple, mid 40s_  and starts playing “You Got It.” They keep the middle seat open, each of them on their own side, a foot of space between them, but he can still feel the ghost of her warmth against him, a reminder of just how close she was. In another lifetime, he would reach a hand across the middle seat, seeking out hers, but instead, he folds his hands on his lap and waits to return to the hotel.

* * *

She’s in his room fiddling with the clock radio. Nothing good on TV, apparently. When she finds a station that isn’t static, she keeps it on, then starts swaying her hips when she can tell it’s 4 Non Blondes playing. Though he’s in the bathroom, she by the bed, one of the long mirrors is positioned so that he can see out to her as he washes his face, changes with the door partially open. When the singing comes in, she’s unzipping the back of her dress in a practiced way, one that says _I do this alone each time,_  her arms contorting around her body in order to pull the zipper all the way down, and then, she’s in just her underwear, the dress abandoned on the bed as she crouches toward the minibar.

He predicts: a Three Musketeers and a bag of potato chips. When he hears her tear open a bag, he smiles to himself. 

“Want some chips?” she asks around a mouthful. 

He’s in just his underwear and his half-unbuttoned shirt, but he thinks that might be alright. When she turns around, he can see that she’s wearing a thong, so maybe it’s _really_  alright. She still has the same birthmark. _What an idiotic thing to think,_  he tells himself, but still, he looks at it with reminiscence, as if it’s a friendly reminder of better times.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, leaving the bathroom, leaving the rest of his suit behind. 

When she turns to face him, he needs a moment to take her in, the blonde hair, the sun spots at the tops of her breasts, the cesarean scar on her lower belly, the cellulite around her thighs. She’s so familiar to him, so iconic, like something he sees on his commute to and from work everyday, like the stacks of books in a library that make him feel so quiet and small. The mark above her lip, the color of her eyes, they’re so visible even in the dim light of this hotel room, and he wants to kiss her, wants to kiss away the bad years of their lives, but he knows it could never be that easy. If it were that easy, he would’ve done it a long time ago, maybe even right when they met. 

Gracefully, she pulls one hand from the bag of potato chips, then reaches up to bring a chip to his lips, her look far-out and warm, her lips parted, her face so beautiful and mesmerizing that he almost forgets to chew. To reciprocate, he forces his own hand into the bag, then brings a chip to her lips, waits for her to take it into her mouth, then rubs his thumb along her cheek, an involuntary movement, what he would’ve done so many other times, and she flinches at the touch, but he can tell that she didn’t want to.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she blushes with an open mouth, fingertips coming to her lips. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m-”

“I miss you.”

She sounds almost tearful as she looks up at him, hand still over her mouth, eyes so wide and blue. 

“I miss you so much,” she says, her voice sounding so small. “I don’t know how to stop missing you.”

And he doesn’t know what to do, how to respond, what he could possibly say, but she sets the chip-bag down, leaves it behind as she steps onto tiptoe before him, brings her palms to his chest as she kisses him once, chastely, as if he’s just a friend she’s now getting to know better. When she goes to pull away, he brings his hand to her cheek, leans forward to take her again, to kiss her in a way he’ll be able to remember, to kiss her so that he has some part of her to hold on to. And though he doesn’t expect her to, though he doesn’t know why she would, she kisses him back, exhales against him, leans into him. She’s here, she’s kissing him, and she’s perfect, and he feels as if he can’t breathe, as if nothing has ever happened between them before, as if their lives are just now intersecting in a lightning bolt of time, as if some higher power has planned this whole night in order to create some kind of human magic. He kisses her as if this is the last time he’ll ever kiss her; she kisses him as if he’ll disappear in the morning, leaving her behind once again.

She takes a condom from her purse even though she had him get a vasectomy ten years ago. Handing it to him, she lets him pull it out while she unclasps her own brassiere, slips off her own underwear. And it’s all almost painful because he knows her body as well as he knows his own, wraps his palms around her hips, knows every sound and every little feeling with such intense clarity. The sensation of her, the sound of her, he feels as if he’s come home, as if he’s working on muscle memory alone, as if they never went through the legal system, as if they went to today’s wedding as a married couple, as if the pictures they took together were ones that they would print out and have framed to keep in their family’s home. The thing is, he’s seen every reckless thing that this world has to offer; he’s made every mistake a man can make - except for cheating, that’s his one saving grace - and knows how each one feels. He’s had cocaine, he’s taken MDMA on an apartment balcony in West Hollywood, he’s eaten in Michelin star restaurants, he’s driven through the south of France in a convertible with a troublesome gear-shift, but it was all for nothing because it made him feel emptier than he ever thought he could feel. In the future, he wishes there could be an _Eternal Sunshine_  kind of thing, only this time it’s to add people to your memories; he wants to see her sunglassed face in the French sun, her lazy morning-after look as she wears his shirt and drinks coffee he made her. He wants to try again, and this time, he wants to be what she deserves. He wants to stop being so impulsive and to start showing up for her. He doesn’t care if it’s hard or if it forces him to face uncomfortable situations; he just wants to be there, to have her as a part of his life, to be a part of hers.

Afterward, they’re each on their backs, both looking up at the ceiling, a small but present distance between their bodies. They don’t know what this means at all, can’t think through what it could possibly mean, but for now it feels meaningless enough. It feels as if they could let go and just have this be something that happened; in that way, the worst-case scenarios aren’t so bad anymore. _Was it a mistake?_  he asks himself, but he knows it wasn’t, not for him, not in the least, but he thinks that now, not in six months, not when he still hasn’t seen his kids in such a long time and not when she doesn’t return his calls even after this. Because he knows how bad life can be, he stops thinking about the future and instead focuses on how right now he feels whole. He’s next to her, and things feel alright. He’s learned how valuable it is to be able to feel alright.

“I still hate you,” she says in the dark, looking up at the ceiling.

He waits for her to elaborate, but she seems not to want to explain. 

“I don’t hate you at all,” he says, “never even for a second.”

“You resented me.”

“I...I resented real life. And I took it out on you.”

“Incredibly mature.”

“We’ve had this fight plenty of times before.”

She takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly.

“I still hate you,” she repeats. “And I hate when your kids ask me where you are, and I can’t even tell them. When one of them asked to get a Facebook, I didn’t allow it because I thought they might look you up. You were weak. You thought things would be so easy. And now, I pick up all the slack of it. I think of you from years ago, and I think, I hate him so much. I hate his guts. What a fucking loser.”

He stretches his fingers in an attempt to keep them from shaking.

“But…” she tries to find words. “It was...that was years ago. I keep having faith that one day you’ll change, and sometimes, it seems like it, and sometimes, it doesn’t seem like it at all. It’s how I hate who you were, but you’ll always be that person. We can’t change the past, and in so many ways, I don’t even want to move past it.”

“It feels like all I ever try to do is move past it,” he says, “but it’s one step forward, two steps back.”

“I still love you.”

For a moment, he can’t breathe, can’t think, closes his eyes to shut the world out. He hears it echo in his head again, a statement so similar, _I want to marry you. Take it or leave it._

“It’s stupid, and I wish I didn’t,” she admits, and in his peripheries, he can see her cheeks flush, “but I do. And I need to stop because it’s a fantasy, but I know it’s a fantasy I’ll never stop having. And you did that to me. I can’t forgive you for that. And I can’t forgive that I can love you this much for this long while you want nothing to do with me.”

He moves onto his side, faces her, moves closer to her while she looks far-out and tired. Gently, going slowly as a way to ask for permission, he brings his arm over her bare belly, takes her hip in the palm of his hand, leans his head against her shoulder. 

“You’re wrong,” he tells her, tone whisper-quiet, as if speaking any louder would shatter glass, as if these are things that are to be kept between two people and two people only, not even God hearing. 

And they’re silent for a long time, and he can feel the way she breathes, trying to slow her heart rate, closing her eyes at times in order to calm herself. 

“You had sex with me after an incest wedding,” he says huskily, trying to break the tension.

And the way she tenderly laughs with him makes him think that they might still have a chance. 

* * *

They go to an all-hours diner for breakfast because her flight is at eight in the morning and nowhere else is open. She orders four slices of Texas-style French toast; he orders an omelet but feels guilty about the eggs.

“Are we ever going to talk about it?” she asks as is she expects his answer to be no. 

He got her bags from her room when she asked, letting her stay in bed just a little while longer. For the three-day trip, she brought a single suitcase, not even one to check, along with a big purse. She clearly isn’t here to stay.

“Depends,” he says as he watches her take a forkful of toast, so buttery and and covered in powdered sugar and syrup. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I want things to be easy.” She swallows. “I want you to not hurt me.”

“I never want to hurt you again.”

“Yeah, but will you still hurt me anyway?”

And he doesn’t have an answer for that. He doesn’t know if there _is_  an answer for that. Love is just committing to being hurt by someone as often as you must be, he thinks, because that person hurts you in the right way. She took his kids from him while he was on cocaine. Though it hurts, though it hurts unbearably, he’s so thankful that she did it. 

Shrugging, not knowing what to say, he manages, “I think I’ll hurt you more if you aren’t in my life than if you are.”

And the Uber to the airport is tense. At some point, he’s going to have to get his car towed from that Taco Bell parking lot. He has things to face when he goes back to his apartment, when he goes back to his job; he has things to prove to himself and, hopefully, to her. No matter where life goes, no matter what happens to him, he knows it’s all going to be hard, so hard he thinks he might not be able to bear it, so he has to do the hard things that are worth doing. No drugs, no get-rich-quick jobs, no abandonment, no woe. 

_I’m doing this for you,_  he thinks, as if she can hear him. _I’m doing this for myself, but I owe it more to you than I do to me. Fuck the money. Fuck the cars, this place, fuck everything about it. The only goal that matters is coming home to you. That’s the only thing that has ever mattered. I was delusional to think there was anything else. I hope that someday you can forgive me._

He stands alongside her as she checks in, as she has her boarding pass printed, as she brings out her passport to confirm her identity; he doesn’t even recognize the photograph, asks her if he can take a closer look, sees that she has stamps from Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway. _I didn’t know,_  he thinks. _I didn’t know at all._

“So,” she says, ready to go through security, saying whatever goodbye she can. 

“So,” he echoes, hands in his pockets, uncomfortable.

She’s in exercise leggings and a long-sleeved top, looking as if she’s about to go running. This morning, he braided her hair back for her in the way she liked years ago. When he looks down at her, he sees her face so bare, no makeup, that he feels almost as if he’s violating her, as if he’s forcing her into vulnerability. Then, she reaches into her purse - the bigger one, a different purse than last night’s - and pulls out the photograph of them from the wedding, pushing it toward him. 

“I don’t know what to say,” she admits, furrowing her brow and looking down at how he takes the photograph from her, “but I think that someday we both might.”

He nods, not sure of what this means, not sure of what this gesture could be, but on the back of the folded-over photograph, there’s letters and numbers, a pen-scribbled note to him. If he reads it in front of her, he fears it’ll be too much for both of them, so he pockets the photograph, says, “Thank you.”

She nods in recognition, then turns to leave him, walking down the airport’s corridors and following signs for security. _Run after her,_  he thinks. _Run after her and tell her how you feel. Pick her up and spin her around and beg her to stay. Tell her you love her. Really, seriously, tell her you love her. Because you do. You always have. You’ve just been too much of an idiot to realize it, but now, you know it. You know it so well. Run after her and tell her you love her._

But if he runs after her now, then he has to be better now. He has to be able to see his kids and to know that he will never abandon them ever again. He has to figure out what to do about the company, what parts of his life are fueled by greed, what he really wants out of life. If he runs to her now, then things will fall apart. Even if the gesture is beautiful, life requires more than just beauty. Instead, he needs to be there for her in the ways she needs him to be. He has to be worthy of her forgiveness. He has to know that he’s done everything in his power to make things right in his life. He has to know beyond a doubt that he’s apologized. 

For a long time, he stands there waiting, clutching the folded photograph in his pocket, not wanting to move from the place where he last saw her. Still, he needs to get his car, and he needs to figure out what will happen with his company, and he needs to sell his apartment and move further east toward his family. As he goes to leave, he can’t take the anticipation, takes the photograph out of his pocket before he calls a car. When he looks down at the picture, when she’s far enough away for him to miss her, he reads the little note on the back; it’s her phone number, a new one, and beneath it, there’s a scribbled smiley face, then a single word underlined twice. 

_ Scumbag. _

This time, he isn’t going to fuck things up. 

 


End file.
